In your bag No: 318 – James Taylor

In your bag 318, James Taylor
Lovely jubbly, a black and white bag shot for you all. And this one is Nikon-centric too! Come and have a look what James is shooting the streets with.
I am a street photographer living in Southampton UK. 99% of the time I shoot film and most of that time it is black and white. I process my own film at home which then ends up being scanned into my computer and my favourite shots get enlarged and hand printed in my darkroom (bathroom!).

I shoot anything with human influence in. As long as people are in or have effected what is in my viewfinder, I press the shutter button.

Nikon L35AF
I love this point and shoot 35mm. Its small, light and takes AA batteries. However, the best part by far is the lens. Its a 5 element 35mm 2.8 and it alone is worth the tradeoff of having a slow wind on and noisy shutter. I have read that the lens does have a heavy vignette but I have not found this on my particular camera, even with a yellow filter and lens hood on.

Nikon F80
This is my main 35mm camera that I got from eBay for next to nothing. Relatively small compared to something like the F100, but as long as the camera body does its job with the shutter i’m more interested in spending money on the lenses that I attach to it.

Nikon FM
This is my backup 35mm SLR as it is so solid and reliable. The built in light meter is accurate, batteries last years and I am able to get up to 40 frames off a 36 roll of film. Sometimes I like the manual focus, film advance and loading this camera offers me and makes a change from an electronic camera.

Mamiya 645J
This relatively cheap medium format camera is of excellent build quality and I really enjoy using it. Medium format is a lot different to 35mm and not having a built in light meter requires a different shooting method all together. The larger negatives are nice to work with and only having 15 frames a roll forces me to stop and think about each shot rather than pressing the shutter and hoping.

Lenses
I use two autofocus lenses for the F80; the Nikkor 24mm 2.8 AF D and the Nikkor 85mm 1.8 AF D. These can also be used on my FM but of course they are then manual focus. I also have a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 Series E that I use with the FM. For the Mamiya I have the Sekor C 85mm f/2.8 and the 150mm f/4.

Film
I have recently discovered Rollei film and found the results are exactly what I want. Before I found myself changing the look of other film once scanned into the computer to how I want it. With the Rollei range it comes out exactly how I like with no editing. I use Retro 400s, Superpan 200 and Pan 25 to give me a broad ISO range.

Other things I carry around are a Lenspen, batteries, spare 645 magazines and yellow filters. The bag itself is just a messenger bag from a high street shop that I have put a padded insert in.

I am most active on Google+, although I do have a 500px account and personal website:

Keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com. Send me a hi resolution image of the bag (please make sure it is horizontal) and its contents, with some details about yourself and what you shoot. Oh and don’t forget your contact details (twitter, flickr, tumbler et al). Send the bag shots here.